Growing up, I always ‘heard’ the word cozinha referred to as the bathroom. However, learning Portuguese now, cozinha refers to the the kitchen or cooking. Has anyone else experienced this phenomena? If so, any explanations? Was it just a very loose translation?
Olá, @Medeiros! That mix-up seems to have plenty of comedic potential
Olá Joseph. No kidding! The two are closely related in more ways than one.
Turns out, Casinha means “little house”. Casinha de banho means “shower house”. Growing up in the 60’s-70’s, casinha meant “bathroom” in our family. The kitchen was just referred to as the “kitchen”.
I don’t know…maybe the word casinha is just a carry-over term from the old days referring to a ‘little out house’ out back. Or maybe it was my family’s way to codeword the message to us kids in front of neighbors…
Ah, casinha is different. We do use casinha relatively often still to this day The default translation for bathroom is casa de banho. Casinha is simply the diminutive form of the first word, casa. Not to be confused with cozinha, which means kitchen.